Monday, 13 June 2011

Sex and Money in the City

In the last few weeks a masked woman dressed in black and wearing a bustier to reveal some cleavage is going to the poorer places in Hong Kong and handing out cash and instant noodles to the needy.

She's been named "Bauhinia Heroine" and she describes her giveaways as a protest against the widening gap in the city.

Handing out instant noodles to poor residents in Hong Kong

"The SAR government favours the rich, rendering the rich richer, and poor poorer," she wrote on her microblog on Tencent. "I think only the poor should benefit from the [government's upcoming] HK$6,000 handout, but not the tycoons. That's why I began wearing a mask and giving out my HK$6,000 as a sort of protest."

The media has been trying to guess who she is and all they know for now is that Bauhinia Heroine is in her 30s, runs her own business and began her anti-poverty campaign after being inspired by Kick-Ass, an American film about a teenager playing a real-life superhero.

Her charitable acts have received a lot of attention and even from documentary filmmakers.

The mystery woman has lots of cash to hand out

However, Bauhinia Heroine has also inspired filmmaker Stephen Shiu Jr who recently made 3D Sex and Zen: The Extreme Fantasy which was completely panned by critics, but is packing in curious audiences who want to watch sex scenes in 3D.

She denies her crusade is part of a marketing campaign for his movie. Perhaps she wants to rethink her outfit...